The Chief Executive Officer of the CFG Advisory, Tilewa Adebajo, has said that the Senate does not have the authority to approve the Ways and Means, as there are no laws that give them the authority to do so, and that the approval was in violation of Section 38 of the CBN.
” He went on to explain that section 38 of the CBN act, which was passed by the legislation in 2007, stated that the revenues should not exceed 5% of the previous year’s revenue, which turned out to be 500 million, as the revenue for last year was 10 trillion Naira. “If the law says that the ways and means financing cannot exceed 500 billion, the first question we need to ask is how come it’s at 22.7 trillion?”
He said that the debt management office put out a statement on the fourth of May that he said provided clarity to the public. “We now got clarity on the interest rate of Ways and Means is 20%. So, what they are saying is that they are going to issue bonds, and they are not going to issue these bonds to the public, but they are going to issue the bonds to the Central Bank in violation of Section 38. The Central Bank cannot collect repayment from the government in forms of securities, that is clearly stated, they are now saying, in that same statement, that there is a statutory requirement that allows them to go the senate and the house of reps for approval to refinance ways and means. So, there is a contradiction between the debt management office statement and that of the CBN act”
He stated that if the Senate was to have the authority to approve Ways and Means, the CBN act will have to be amended. “You could have amended the fiscal responsibility act, you could have amended CBN act, not approved an illegality. How can the Senators approve an illegality? Does that make it right?”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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